Peace

The past few days have been such a blessing to our team. I can only describe it with the word peace. Since we have arrived we have been given reassurance that the Lord brought us to this place, this time, and with these people for a reason. We got to sit down with the Laura and begin our orientation yesterday. It was a solid 2 hours of the best advise we could have received! We all felt peace about this experience. It is not going to be easy at all, but God's work usually is not. 

During orientation we discussed the in's and out's of Agape. We talked about our jobs and how we will be working Monday, Tuesday, Thursday nights from 4-8:30 and all day on Saturday and Sunday. The best way to describe how Laura told us to approach this job was to see ourselves as a mother, sister, or aunt of the children. Here are a few things that she told us that will really help you get a good look into our job:

The children are on AIV drugs for HIV/AIDS. The drugs are a very old version on what American people are taking, but it saving their lives. 

The children are LIVING and not dying with AIDS. Praise God for that!

The first years that Laura was volunteering at Agape, 15 children passed away. There has not been a child die at the orphanage in years now! All of the children there right now are in pretty good health. 

Many of the nannies that are working there are HIV positive. When they are at Agape, they feel free and able to tell people about that. 

Agape is such a blessing to everyone involved, because society gives no hope for children with HIV. Society is telling the children that they are:

1. an orphan

2. "dying" with HIV

In Buddhist beliefs, both of these things are sings that you have done something awful in a previous life. 

Agape home teaches UNCONDITIONAL love. What a blessing to be a part of!

The children at Agape are dealing with separation problems, sexual abuse, emotional problems, and health issues. BUT they are still children who love to laugh and have fun! Our job at Agape will be not only catering to the needs of the children, but also the nannies.

The Nannies!!! We are so excited to finally meet them. There are 45 nannies that do shift work at agape. They told Laura that they have seen us riding our bikes around. They asked how old we are because they think we look too young. We are so excited to pursue friendships with these ladies!

Names. Laura gave us a few pieces of paper with all of the children currently at Agape and their name. We are thankful for this! It is going to be extremely hard to pronounce their names, but it is respectful to always try. This will be a great way to show them that we are interested in their lives. 


A few of the girls who have been at Agape since they were babies are now getting to the age where they are finishing school and leaving Agape. She said it is such a beautiful thing for them to be able to live their lives without having to tell people that they have HIV and not being coined as "agape kids". At Agape the hope is for every child to get to live full lives just like everyone else.

It is okay for me to put pictures of the children on this blog. Phew! But, I will not be able to put a picture with their name. This is simply because these are government children AND safety reasons. But you can sure pray for each one of their faces. God will know which one needs it :)

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The other ACU students that are interning with World Wide Witness are at Chiang Mai university and Payap University doing college outreach ministry. They had orientation this weekend at a lake outside of Chiang Mai and asked us to join them for some fellowship time. It was awesome getting to see familiar faces and meet some new people as well. What you won't be able to completely understand through pictures is the beauty of this lake. We stayed on "house boats". I didn't examine the structural details of them, but they seemed to be floating or on stilts. We had to take about a 10 minute ride on amazing boats that you will see in the pictures. The room we had was simple, because time was spent outside! Our fellowship time was spent swimming, eating Thai food, talking about our hopes for this summer, and praying. 

The only way to describe the beauty and peacefulness of this place is to try and show you from the pictures we took. 

(By the way, the pictures on the blog are always a compilation of all of our pictures.)

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It is the rainy season here now, and we have been complaining about how we haven't seen any rain yet! Well that changed tonight. Laura came with us to dinner with the other WWW group in town at their coordinators house. There was a beautiful rain the whole time we were there! We loved it. Laura had driven us in a new Agape van (thank goodness). When we were leaving, the streets were flooded completely! We still tried to trek out of the area, and the water eventually got so high that the head lights were under water!! The van was a trooper and so was Laura because we made it out alive. It was a much of excitement and we finally got the rain we have been asking for. Welcome to rainy season! 

Here are a few more random pictures taken this weekend.
 Blessings again to all of you!